We should wake up to the rest of the world..

100% of French schoolchildren are learning a foreign language. That’s also the case in Austria and Norway. Poland and Spain aren’t far behind.

The median among European countries is 92% across primary and secondary school, according to Pew. In the U.S., that number is 20%.

New Jersey is the only U.S. state where more than half of students are learning a second language. Wisconsin, Maryland and Vermont are next at around one-third. The rate is just 9% in Arkansas, New Mexico and Arizona.

No sorpresas: Spanish is by far the most popular foreign language taught in the U.S. In Europe, it’s English.

“Their length ranges from three weeks in South Korea to three months in America, Italy and Latvia. … studies have found that children regress over the summer even in Belgium, Britain, Canada, Germany and Malawi, all of which have much shorter summer breaks than America’s.”